Legal humor. Seriously.

December 16, 2013

Good Reason to Kill #41: Employee of the Month

It's an old story, really: boy believes he should be Employee of the Month, girl is chosen instead, boy and girl argue, boy shoots girl's car.

It still seems worth mentioning, though.

According to CBS Miami, a Broward County man was arrested on weapons charges after he shot out the window of a co-worker who had been named November's Employee of the Month at the Deerfield Beach Walmart. Investigators said that after the award was announced, the two started arguing about their relative workloads. (The award confers no benefits other than recognition, apparently, so it wasn't that.) During the argument, the suspect "told her repeatedly, 'I'm gonna show you.'"

He didn't say exactly what he planned to show her, but apparently it was something like "I have a gun and am not afraid to shoot a car with it." A few hours later, a witness saw him park his car next to hers, and he asked if she was currently working. The witness replied yes, and a few minutes later, the suspect allegedly fired a shot through the Employee of the Month's window, then drove away. Especially since the act was captured on surveillance video, the culprit was not hard to find.

A spokesperson for the Broward County Sheriff's Office did a fine job with this one, although she did sound a bit like she was narrating a trailer for the movie version: "She was announced as employee of the month ... you would think that would be something good, people would be happy for her. But there was one employee who wasn't happy." (Emphasis added.) She didn't start with "In a town ..." but that could be added later.

Investigators said they were "still stumped on the exact motive for the shooting," which seems unlikely. The spokesperson was willing to speculate, though, not only as to the motive but also the shooter's job qualifications. “Perhaps [the shooter] wanted to be employee of the month," she continued, "but clearly these actions that we saw in response to this, I think we see why he wasn’t chosen as employee of the month."

I wasn't able to find any official criteria for that award, and my guess would be that they are set by the individual stores rather than at the corporate level. But I still think she is rushing to judgment on this one. Unless he had shown some sort of behavioral problem (like maybe firing at other co-workers) before the award was made, and the report doesn't say anything about that, I don't think we can speculate as to why he wasn't chosen.